Sprinkle Dust magnets

Don't ask why I am remembering to blog this week.  Three whole blog posts!  Maybe my inner turmoil is needing release and since my words would be too high level for the littles and Sissy is in Thailand, I am yapping it up on here.

Today is a rainy, fairly cool day.  Of course, it still feels humid, ridiculously humid.  The kind of humid that still makes you want your air on.  But alas, it isn't.  What to do with these littles?  They are about to drive me stir crazy!  In most of the week due to the heat, then today due to the rain.

So I pulled out a craft idea.  Needless to say, the kiddos loved it and we even got Big J in on the action.  Woo hoo.  Win, win!

 

First I got the glass stones out and had B organize into big and little.  Go mama with the little bit of school work I put in there while I got the rest of it ready.  Just needed mod podge, brushes, and unicorn and fairy sprinkle dust (aka glitter).  I couldn't find my big, brand new bottle of mod podge, so I made some homemade.  I don't know why I was so chicken before.  Super simple and super cheap!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After they dried, we glued magnets to the back and buh-bam! fun little magnets.  And it took the littles some time and concentration and creativity.  Fun craft.  AND with all the unicorn and fairy sprinkle dust floating around and landing in koolaid, potty breaks will be much more exciting!

Woo hoo! Rainbow rice, purging, and strong willed

I think I am finally starting to get it together.  A little.  Un poco.

Yesterday B and I did a fun craft.  Rainbow rice.  It seriously was a lot of fun.  I might have to make more.  I got the "recipe" off Pinterest but made some changes and notes for the future.  (see here for original blog post: http://shareandremember.blogspot.com/2011/06/rainbow-rice-garden-sensory-play.html)

The "recipe" is as follows:  "I measured out the rice (4 cups) and put it in a Ziploc bag with about 2T of food coloring or liquid water colors (works great!) and 3 T of rubbing alcohol. The kids helped me mix the rice in the bags to spread the color. We put them on pans to dry in the sun."

I grabbed my little helper and we started making Rainbow rice.  Could he be any sweeter?

B and I actually put 5 cups of rice in the bag and used 2 of the little teardrop looking bottles of food dye.  They are not quite 1 T each.  Even though it was less dye and more rice, they sure turned out vibrant anyway.  If you want lighter colors, you could even go with just one of those little tiny bottles.

We did learn the yellow is so vibrant that if you put both of the dyes in, it will actually come out orange.  So the second time we tried (really third after B turned my yellow into green the first time) I only put half of the yellow dye in and a lovely shade of yellow was born.



Because it felt like 40 degrees below zero yesterday, we decided to "bake" the rice, rather than put outside to dry it out.  We put the rice in a pan, turned the oven to 170 degrees, and dried/baked for 30-40 minutes.  Warning.  Your house WILL smell like rubbing alcohol.  At no point (once I took my head out of the oven) did I feel overwhelmed by the fumes.  When the rice is dry, it will no longer smell like alcohol. 



I just love the colors.

NOTE:  You will make a HUGE mess. On the counter tops.  On your hands.  On your clothes.  On your buddy's clothes.  Be prepared!















With the crafting out of my system yesterday, and a great time at girls night out last night, I had a renewed sense of purpose this morning.  Purge.  Purge some of the things I have agreed to do.  Purge some stuff.  I started on my bedroom and was able to identify clothes to get rid of and I have almost an entire bag of trash.  Phew.  It is about time.  I even got the two Christmas trees put IN boxes and one is even in the back of the van to put in storage.  I was on a roll today, but had to stop as the three boys woke up, I had to fix dinner, and had a meeting at church.  But I'm hoping that I was on a roll enough that it will carry over to tomorrow.

The good thought for the day?  I am strong willed, when I want to be, and am typically not afraid to speak my piece.  I know at times this is not a good thing, but for now, it is sufficiently good for me.  God blessed me with that trait, I just must learn to use it for good. 

Nativity

I love Christmas.  The season, the reason, the decorations, the lights, the trees, the expectation.  Everything.  One of my favorite decorations is the nativity set someone bought for me 18 years ago.  It is breakable, and somehow has managed to mostly survive all four of my kids.  Only the donkey is missing an ear and the shepherd's staff is broken at the top.  Otherwise, they are still intact.  I have always wanted my kids to play with them, so they can reenact the Nativity story, but I would always watch out for them.  This year I finally figured it out, with some help from Pinterest.  I can let them reenact the story and ensure my breakables don't get broken.

Here is the Nativity set I made just for them.  It is durable and super cute (in my opinion), using fun little pictures of the scene.  I just bought some cute Nativity stickers, had the hubs cut up some blocks for me, painted the blocks, then mod podged the stickers.

Here is the final product.  Oh, if I could have figured this out earlier and saved the donkey an ear...

Okay, so I am no Norman Rockwell, or Van Gogh, or any other classic artist.  But I really like these blocks!

A new craft

So I'm totally excited to start a new craft with the kiddos today.  It is definitely a multi-day craft.  It normally takes a couple of days anyway, but then I am adding a 24 hour period away from home into the mix.  But I am impatient and decided not to wait.

I learned to make paper during my shift in the Arts marquee while in Chalfont St Peter.  A charming lady named Julia showed us step by step how to make it (although she did the first few steps at home first).  So Amberlie and I (and Breckin if he wakes up soon) are going to start making our own paper.  It will have a tint of gray unless we paint it or use colored paper.  We plan to make cards for friends and family using this paper. 

We already purchased the frames and the netting, just need Michael to put them together. 

Before we need the frames though, we need to shred the paper.  Julia tore hers up into small squares, but we are going to cheat and just shred it.  After it is torn up, we will put it in a bucket of water to sit for 24 hours.  When it has soaked for 24 hours, it will be put into the blender a handful at a time with a LOT of water, pulsing 10 seconds three times.  This is the paper pulp.

Then using a baby bath tub (or something similar), add about 3 gallons of water and 6 cups of paper pulp.  For each sheet of paper, add another cup of pulp.
 

Take a piece of netting and place it on the frame with the net and put the other frame on top. 

Taking the frames, dip them down and pull them straight up and let the water drain out.  Remove the paper from the frame and allow to dry - if super hot and dry like Missouri then it should dry in a couple of hours; in London it takes about 24 hours.

I didn't take a pic after it was dry (we were after all in London!!).

Julia said we could paint with food coloring and it would be vibrant.  Well, we will just have to see what we come up with this weekend we finally finish the project.

Julia also showed us how to make earrings.  Super fun!  I'm not an earring wearer, even though I have two earring holes in each ear.  But it was fun to make gifts.  And next payday or the one after that I plan on buying all the tools to do that as well.  I think Ammi will have her ears pierced by the end of this year if I let her make the earrings.  We shall see!

For now, I have paper to shred!  (And other crafts to work on!!)

Peace.



Another spring craft

So here is another one of the spring crafts I have been working on.  Took me forever to decide what size letters and their placement, then where to put it.  I could put it on the mantle but the new house doesn't have one.  Oh the dilemma.  So this came to me last night when I was deciding what to do.  Gonna stay this way til we move, then who knows.

Happy Spring (for real this time!).

Springtime crafts

I am not a fan of spring.  But since we never had winter, I guess the spring bug hit me.  I can't explain it any other way.  I have a couple of spring color crafts I have started (but so far only one finished).  This one is a wreath for the front door.

I started with this

and ended up with this.  Not going to lie, I misjudged the amount of ribbon I needed and had to make an emergency Hobby Lobby trip. 

Happy Spring!

More crafts

I haven't posted lately.  I have been BUSY with stuff that is no fun (work) and have barely had time to do crafts, much less post them.  So gonna take a moment to share what we have done lately.

Valentine's Day mice puppets

Valentine's Day Cards

Baby Birth Stats (another one - I love these things)

Now, on to cleaning again!

Babies!

I have another blog post I started a week or so ago on American Christianity that I haven't quite finished wrapping my mind around. However, I wanted to share this as it was so much fun.  I saw on Pinterest these cute little signs that showcased baby's name and birth stats.  As soon as I saw the signs, I knew I wanted to make them for my friend's new little bundles of joy.  I repinned the pic and waited for the "big day".  Finally, she had her precious boys and I had the info I needed.  So I grabbed my laptop and sat down to read the instructions.  To my dismay, since I hadn't bothered to read the instructions before, I realized there were no instructions.  The link was to a website where you could BUY them.  Oh, no, that wasn't happening.  So I did some looking around and figured out how I could do it myself.  Turns out I would need a Cricut if I wanted to make it easier.

The search was on for a Cricut, as I had enough Christmas money to buy one.  I searched and searched, then finally gave in and pursued one on Ebay.  LOVE IT!!

It took some trial and error on exploring the size of the letters and numbers, etc. and I feel like if I had more babies to do I could make them even better in the future. 

Here are the results, granted covered somewhat by a tractor, because I wasn't smart enough to take a pic when I was done. 

(It was addicting - so to all my way younger than me married friends out there - get preggo!!)

My new addiction(s)

Let me just say, I have many new addictions.  I had no idea the craft bug would bite.  So my first one is doing crafts.  It bit, and it bit hard.  I love doing easy one with the babies - painting, coloring, stickering (a word??), etc.  I love doing a little harder ones, but hard is relative.  They wouldn't be hard for the die-hard arts and crafts person.  My second one is Hobby Lobby and Hoods.  They are way too fun and send the imagination soaring!  The third is Cricut machine, wood, paint, canvas, and scrapbook paper.  I am starting to accumulate scrapbook paper like crazy.  I use it for so many different things.  It's like crack (for other people, not me), I can't get enough.  For my mother, it is fabric, for me it is scrapbook paper.  Ha ha, I don't even scrapbook.  Lastly the Lifeway store in KC, but that is for another time.

Within my arts and crafts addiction comes the actual project addictions.  I love the star.  I have shown the star previously.  I made it for family members for Christmas and am a little sad that I don't have more to make.  They are super fun.  But I had a genius idea (in my opinion of course) so I now do have a few more I plan on making.  Can't spill that secret yet though, you never know who might read this!

My next fave is crosses.  I have always liked crosses, have several throughout the house.  The day I dropped Hayley off at the airport for her India mission trip I stopped in Lifeway with my mom.  Lifeway had these really cute crosses on their wall for sale.  I really like them, but unfortunately with only a part-time job, can't afford the price.  So my mind started ticking.  I could make crosses similar in design to the ones on the wall.  Sure, they wouldn't look as nice, but I am working on that.  After Lifeway, came the Hobby Lobby stop.  Sure enough, wood crosses, scrapbook, and other items soon found their way in my basket.  I have made 3 crosses, have two more to make.  These are addicting.  I am still trying to improve them with each one I make. 



The lighting isn't too grand on the last one.  No matter where I put it, it either appeared washed out (without flash), had a big flash reflection in the center (with flash), or had big shadows as above (in the "spotlight").  As I am working with these and learning how to perfect them, Michael is going to be inundated with crosses.  He is going to love me for that.

Cricut.  Now what's to say?  I became obsessed with it when I couldn't get my hands on one.  Now I have one and gladly the obsession didn't go away, just tamed it down a lot.  It is way fun to come up with things to do with it.   I have one project that just sat there waiting for weeks, actually months.  First for two sweet baby boys to make their appearance (and now they have!!!!!), then waiting on the Cricut machine.  The boys are here and so is the machine.  I was able to make something for them, hopefully their mama likes them as much as I do.  I can't show them until after the shower, just in the off chance someone sees this and tells their mama!

And what is addiction, if you can't share it?  Little Girl has gotten in on it as well.  She picked out a wooden plaque and her fave stickers at HL.  Yesterday she painted the wood (and it wasn't pink, WHO KNEW!!), then strategically placed her puffy stickers.  Below is the almost-finished product.  Daddy needs to add saw hooks to the back so she can hang it on the top bunk.  She is pretty crafty.  Love that girl.

Peace out.

New Bible Study

I started a new Bible Study with Little Girl yesterday while Little man was napping.  I was pretty excited about starting it.  It is a 52 session study on people in the Bible.  It is meant for Sunday Schools, but can be adapted to Home School.  And before anyone gets in an uproar about the latest decision...NOPE it is not a decision I am making.  I am not up to the task of home schooling.  However, I am up to the task of studying people of the Bible with a little one. 

We started our study on Joseph.  Joseph had a big family.  He was his father's favorite son.  His father treated him special.  Joseph had dreams that angered his brothers and father about wheat bundles and stars bowing down to his wheat bundle or him.  It was a lot more in depth than that.  We learned a new song that God made our arms that wave and we will praise Him with those arms.  We also learned, "I'll praise you because you made me."  Psalm 139:14 

And then Little Girl's favorite part???  CRAFTS!!! 

We made people out of pipe cleaners or furry sticks as they now appear to be called (ha ha, who knew??).  Just like Joseph, we are a part of a family.  Don't ask why we have a cheesy goofy grin...I just don't know what that is about now.

Then we cut out and colored little mini mama and little girl.  And colored them.  I believe we use them in a craft later in this session. I really like that about this book, we may make something on day 1 that is used again later. 

Obviously, Little Girl is the brightly colored, interesting, happy girl on the left.  Mama is the gray haired chick with the Mizzou shirt.  Who knew?? 

We learned our song about our arms while putting these together.  We also learned that Joseph was important in his family but God had something even more important planned for his life.  We will hear about that more today and Thursday (not doing lessons on Wednesdays).

Super excited to continue with this Bible Study with my fave 5 year old little girl.  It is a precious thing to watch her learn more about these important people and what God has in store for her.

More craftiness

Yesterday the kids and I decided to make dough ornaments.  Amberlie helped me make the dough.  You start with:

one cup of salt

one and a half cup of warm water

mix together

then add 4 cups of flour

Then after it becomes dough, start kneading it.

 Roll it out to 1/4" thickness...

 And start cutting out your ornaments with cookie cutters.  Put a hole in your ornament with a toothpick, so you can hang it on your tree when it is done.

Then you put on parchment paper on a baking pan and bake at 250 degrees for 2-3 hours, depending on how thick your ornaments are.  It took ours the entire three hours. 

When done and cooled off, start painting.  We painted the next day (today).

Breckin, his ornaments, and painted face.

Ammi and her ornaments

Mama's ornaments

When done, spray the ornaments with polyurethane or clear acrylic, add the string, and enjoy!!

Kids loved this craft.  It was fun and gives you ornaments in case your two year old has broken all the glass ornaments this year... just sayin'. 

Catching Up

Okay, so now that the grandparents have their gifts, preschool teachers have received theirs, AND I have had a minute (but no longer) to sit and think, I'm going to catch up.  We finished making presents for Christmas, plus a few goodies to keep here at the house.

I wrote about the coasters before and provided pics of the first sets, but have made four more sets.  Here they are:

Ammi helped with them and even had the brilliant idea to use scrapbook scissors with the fun blades to cut the paper in interesting patterns.  She totally can think outside the box ~ so much more creative than me.

I also did one more star, which I am figuring out more each time.  Of course, I don't have any more to do now that I about have this one figured out.  It was a fun project though.  The second one I made I used 3 different papers as suggested by the pattern.  That made it pretty fun and different.  The third one I used the same paper and it had a continuity in it that I really liked.  That was me thinking outside the box in a very obvious sort of way - who knew I had it in me to deviate from the instructions?!?

This last weekend I worked on a few more items that involved sewing, but those aren't quite done.  I'll address those in a different post - but sewing is a new thing for me.  So don't judge too harshly.  Today we did dough ornaments, but they aren't painted yet.  I can't quite keep up on here with all the craftiness in this house, but it has been soooo much fun.  Love those kids.